Conventionalism

“ If we apply this law to society, if we assume the existence of reasonable beings around us, then the demand that all the faculties of the individual should be uniformly cultivated includes also the demand that all reasonable beings should be cultivated uniformly with each other. ”

“ I have not, with others, discovered that a true development of society, the stability of government, the conservation of the rights of all classes, depend largely upon a social system in which one class, few in numbers, capable and conscientious, rules the other classes. ”

“ On the other hand, it is evident that all the tendencies of humanity, both in its politics and in its civil laws, are towards universalization,—that is, towards a complete transformation of the idea of society as determined by our statutes. ”

“ The theory of socialistic teaching, namely, the conditions of production and distribution, could be constantly remodeled just as other human institutions, i.e. the customs of governments and societies, the laws, ideas of beauty and morality, knowledge of nature, and views of society. ”

“ Systems of equality, with a community of labour and of goods, are highly unfavourable to it. I begin with these, because, in all the objections to such systems, a common principle is involved, the knowledge of which, in its different bearings, will be useful to us afterwards, when we come to examine the encouragements to moral restraint, which, under the existing state of things, are offered to the different classes of society. ”

“ But to base society on conventions is to impute an element of arbitrariness to these combinations and applications, and to make them independent, as they can never be, of the limits inexorably fixed by the nature of things. ”

“ But the foundation of society always has been a system for the production and distribution of the necessities of life, and hence social institutions, customs, laws and creeds are what they are at any time because an economic system is what it is. ”

“ If a question should arise as to the perfection or imperfection of a state of society arranged on the principles which we have already propounded, (and every society does so arrange itself by the natural tendencies of man, without foreign guidance, as was shown in our inquiry into the origin of society) , if, I say, such a question should arise, the answer to it would pre-suppose the solution of the following query: “Is the development and satisfaction of all the wants of man, and indeed the harmonious development and satisfaction of them all, provided for in the given state of society?” ”

“ But it is upon this conception of natural laws that sociology must build, since sociology—science and not art, we repeat again—is the study of the different aspects under which the activity of men living in society naturally manifests itself. In order that this study might be possible it was necessary that the idea of natural laws should become distinct in turn in connection with the facts of organization and of evolution, moral, religious, intellectual, political and even juridical. ”

“ There is no group of (let us say) ethical institutions answering to domestic, industrial or professional institutions. Social control, as I shall show, is exercised through all kinds of instruments in turn—through religious, governmental and professional organizations, through amorphous masses of people, through individuals and through super-organic products, such as folk-lore, tradition, ceremonial poetry and works of art. A classification, therefore, according to the institution, organ or agency by which control is exercised will not be satisfactory. ”

“ The gradation in the changes that mark the social man justifies a corresponding gradation in the traits that distinguish the social aggregate from other aggregates.
The organic concept of society has taught us to look upon mutual aid, division of labor, formation of industrial groups, specialization and exchange with its facilities for communicating and transporting, as the underlying features of society, corresponding to the growing unlikeness of organs and functions, interdependence of parts and unity seen in living bodies. ”

“ The sociological view, beginning as it does with primitive society, finds that the state, as conceived by the philosopher and the lawyer, does not there exist. It is blended and confused with other institutions. ”

“ Necessarily the essential traits of these two social types are in most cases obscured, both by the antecedents and by the coexisting circumstances. Every society has been, at each past period, and is at present, conditioned in a way more or less unlike the ways in which others have been and are conditioned. Hence, the production of structures, characterizing one or other of these opposed types, is, in every instance, furthered, or hindered, or modified, in a special manner. ”

“ A social system may be conceived in many ways; the commonest are a mould, a machine, and a tree. The first belongs to the static conceptions of society, such as those of Sparta and traditional China: human nature is to be poured into a prepared mould, and to set in a preconceived shape. ”

“ I shall end this chapter and this book by remarking on a fact on which the whole social system should rest: i.e., that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right. ”

“ History accordingly does, when judiciously examined, afford Empirical Laws of Society. And the problem of general sociology is to ascertain these, and connect them with the laws of human nature, by deductions showing that such were the derivative laws naturally to be expected as the consequences of those ultimate ones. ”

“ All the doctrines which ascribe absolute goodness to particular forms of government, particular social arrangements, and even to particular modes of education, without reference to the state of civilization and the various distinguishing characters of the society for which they are intended, are open to the same objection—that of assuming one class of influencing circumstances to be the paramount rulers of phenomena which depend in an equal or greater degree on many others. ”

“ Modern society is organised in such fashion that it is impossible even to conceive of a people at once rich and ignorant. Industry, business, agriculture, demand nowadays very special technical knowledge, and a very complete social organisation; that is to say, they imply a scientific, political, and judicial civilisation of a reasonably high order. ”

“ Thus, then, this sphere, in which fact is regarded as principle, and in which the problem of the development of society is elevated to a position of importance above all others, and seeks to impress its stamp upon the whole of life, is first and foremost. From this point of view the organisation of society is the central problem of all culture, and a distinctive social culture, a social system of life, is evolved. ”

“ The industrial type of society, properly so called, must also be distinguished from a type very likely to be confounded with it—the type, namely, in which the component individuals, while exclusively engaged in production and distribution, are under a regulation such as that advocated by socialists and communists. ”

“ Thus the theory that society is founded upon a Social Contract, which, if taken as a description of the historical process of genesis, is false, is true, if accepted as the constitutive principle of the ideal State towards which progressive nations are tending. ”

“ In practical affairs we ask first if there is any principle of right or wrong involved, then what is best for the practical interests of ourselves and other people, and in a few cases, when these other considerations are irrelevant, what course is dictated by our ideas of fitness and beauty. I will briefly discuss a few of the main types of the argument of policy, grouping them according as they appeal chiefly to the sense of right and wrong, to practical interests, or to aesthetic interests. ”

“ And this uniformity tends to become greater, not less, as society advances; since the evolution of each people, which is at first determined exclusively by the nature and circumstances of that people, is gradually brought under the influence (which becomes stronger as civilization advances) of the other nations of the earth, and of the circumstances by which they have been influenced. History accordingly does, when judiciously examined, afford Empirical Laws of Society. ”

“ Finally, there are certain principles of human nature which are peculiarly connected with the ideas and feelings generated in man by living in a state of society, that is, by forming part of a union or aggregation of human beings for a common purpose or purposes. Few, indeed, of the elementary laws of the human mind are peculiar to this state, almost all being called into action in the two other states. ”

“ I am not, to be sure, concerned to deny that there may be conventions useful enough to society, serving it to maintain government, order, public and private decency, or the commerce on which it must needs rest to be a civilised society at all— commerce of food, commerce of clothing, and so on, up to commerce in knowledge and ideas. ”

“ To show, therefore, that the social contract recognises 'utility' is to show that the whole organism is constructed just as any particular part is constructed. Man comes first and 'society' afterwards. I have already noticed how this applies to his statements about the utility of a law; how his argument assumes an already constituted society, and seems to overlook the difference between the organic law upon which all order essentially depends, and some particular modification or corollary which may be superinduced. ”

“ The different economic, social, and moral questions connected with these various conditions, the illustrations of which could be multiplied indefinitely, may be, generally are, decided by each individual without reference to society at large. ”

“ Still more striking is the application to this case of another general principle, namely, that Progress is the development of Order; a principle which, as I showed in the second chapter, connects every dynamical question in Sociology with the corresponding statical conception. For with the growth of society, the modifying influence of moral force is always increasing, both by larger scope being given to each of its three elements specially, and also by the more perfect consolidation of their union. ”

“ Established customs, rules, and maxims, I take to be one and the same thing. For the authenticity of these maxims rests entirely upon reception and usage; and the only method of proving that this or that maxim is a rule of the common law, is by showing that it hath been always the custom to observe it. But here a very natural and very material question arises: how are these customs or maxims to be known; and by whom is their validity to be determined? ”

“ On the other hand, early codification of custom in a system of written laws secures that thereafter custom shall not develop in this blind unintelligent and socially prejudicial manner, but shall be developed only by deliberate intention and the reasoned fore-thought of the ruling powers of society; it will then develop in the main, in spite of many mistakes, in a way which promotes the efficiency of social life and the welfare of society. ”

“ But acceptance of the truth that the type of a society is determined by the natures of its units, forces on us the corollary that a régime intrinsically of the lowest may yet be the best possible under primitive conditions. ”

“ It should be noticed that this ideal of the contractual organism synthesises the two great doctrines or theories of society which have generally been regarded as irreconcilable alternatives: the doctrine of society as an organism, and that of society as founded upon reason and free will. ”

“ In order to conceive correctly the scope of this general science, and distinguish it from the subordinate departments of sociological speculation, it is necessary to fix the ideas attached to the phrase, "a State of Society." What is called a state of society, is the simultaneous state of all the greater social facts or phenomena. ”

“ Even from so brief an outline, it must be evident that this system does no violence to any of the general laws by which human action, even in the present imperfect state of moral and intellectual cultivation, is influenced ”

“ For what is applicable to our wants, habits, and necessities as a community or state, must necessarily to some extent be determined from the nature and genius of our government and institutions. Or, in other words, 412to determine whether a particular principle harmonizes with the spirit of our institutions, we must look to the habits and condition of the society which has created and lived under these institutions. ”

“ To keep in view this general end, to ascertain the way in which the powers composing that social necessity act, and their variable ingredients, and to maintain that end in them and against them, is the work of an institution which assumes on one hand, to the concrete of civil society, the position of an external universality. ”

“ The question whether the society is formed of only two classes, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, or whether all the intervening grades are represented in a sound and healthy proportion, is a question which has importance because it furnishes indications of the state and prospects of the society. No society which consists of the two extreme classes only is in a sound and healthy condition. ”

“ The economic conditions—which are the resultant of the ethnical energies and aptitudes acting in a given physical environment—are the determining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal manifestations of human life, both individual and social. ”

“ But the laws of the generation of human opinions are not within our present subject. They are part of the general theory of human progress, a far larger and more difficult subject of inquiry than political economy. We have here to consider, not the causes, but the consequences, of the rules according to which wealth may be distributed. Those, at least, are as little arbitrary, and have as much the character of physical laws, as the laws of production. ”